


To Get to the Other Side

by Shoulderpadfoot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Artist!Sirius, M/M, Neighbors, Nurse!Lily, Pining Remus Lupin, Slow Burn, gradstudent!Remus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2020-07-20 11:39:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19991554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoulderpadfoot/pseuds/Shoulderpadfoot
Summary: All of his movements, Remus thinks, look like they /feel/ good. He tosses this last scrap of his clothing behind him without looking and walks slowly into the water.Remus sees the curve of his calves as they begin to disappear in the water, his slender thighs, his smooth round white cheeks, his narrow hips. He knows he has to look away. A man should look away. He has to look away. He has to.He can’t.





	1. Hope in a Storm

On a Sunday at the end of June, Remus wakes up in a stifling bedroom despite the two box fans blowing directly at him. Damp heat radiates from the nape of his neck, where the pillow sweat-plasters his hair to his skin. He checks his phone for the time — 7:12 — and thinks, _why?_ , but if anyone were there to ask for clarification — why _what_? — he would be unable to give it. Why is it so damn hot? Why is he awake at this hour on a Sunday? Why did he stay up until one-thirty the night before as if he were 21 instead of 31 years old?

He grunts himself upright and throws open all of the windows on his way to the bathroom.

When he emerges, _coffee_ crystalizes in his mind as the only worthwhile goal in this world. He fills the kettle with fresh water and listens for the click-click-whoosh of the gas burner. He sets his Chemex on the bar-cart-with-a-cutting-board-on-it-so-look-now-it’s-a-countertop and pulls the packet of ground dark roast from the cupboard, shushing the self-judging voice: he used to grind his own coffee. By _hand_. He scratches at the rumpled, sweaty hair on the back of his head, then rakes his hand through the fluffy curls on top of his head and down his face, trying to press alertness into his scrunched eyes on the way to his stubbly chin. His eyes unfocus as he stares out the window until the whistle of the kettle brings him back to himself.

As he pours the hot water and it turns to coffee in his pot, he looks out the kitchen window and notices darkness descending despite the early hour, the trees bending, their leaves flipping frantically against one another to flash their silvery underbellies against each other’s dark tops. Everything goes a little green, and the wind coming through the window screen carries the scent of rain on hot asphalt. He hears a rumble.

His face brightens in a small smile as he pours the first cup of coffee — for him a Major Arcana — into his blue mug and looks down at himself to be sure he won’t be arrested for public indecency. The white V-neck undershirt he slept in is damp around the neckline. He keeps it on but decides to pull a pair of joggers out of the hamper in the bathroom and over his gray boxers before heading for the stairs.A few of his scars reach their fingers beyond the short sleeves of his shirt, but it is so horribly hot out that he’ll take his chances. No one’s up at this hour but church people anyway. He’s still trying, so many years later, to get used to the marks — this is how his body is now. It’s still his home.

Remus Lupin loves a storm, always has. They scared him when he was a child, but his abiding memory is of the comfort he got for that fear, rather than the fear itself.As if with some prescience, he relished the knowledge that his mother was close. When he was small, even a certifiable Act of God couldn’t harm him if she was there, an arm wrapped around him where they sat on the cool concrete floor of the unfinished basement, humming a tune to drown out the sounds of the tornado sirens blaring outside.

Remus can almost sense her closeness now, as warm as the mug in his hand, and he smiles to himself again on the way down the oppressive hallway with its sagging walls, thinking, _If Hope-Lupin-in-a-Thunderstorm was a room spray, it’d revive every corner of this darling dump heap of an apartment_. Another rumble of thunder outside makes him hurry his steps as he reaches the creaky stairs, whose treads are too narrow for the whole length of his feet. He angles himself to avoid falling and keeps his coffee from sloshing.

Thinking of his mother, his smile lights with shy brightness, his skin pulling the scar tight across his nose and freckled cheek. He thinks of the mingled scents of baby powder and sunblock, tomato leaves, humidity, and soil, wishing they really could whisper through the windows and settle between the floorboards here like the soft tones of her voice. Hope Lupin’s proximity could keep all danger at bay. Remus still believes that. 

It’s just, she’s not proximate. She won’t be ever again.

Now thunderstorms make him ache a little behind the sternum, but the longing is a form of love. It keeps her close. The smile lingers on his lips, smaller and sadder now, but there. 

The screen door groans on its hinges as he takes a barefoot step onto the porch. He closes his eyes for the first sip of coffee, his soul magnifying the glory of that bitter warmth. He opens his eyes and draws deeply on the humid air, lets loose a yawn, stretches one arm out and up, arching his back, rolling onto his tiptoes, pulling his hand through the sweet, warm air as if he were swimming in it. When his fingertips find their rest at the nape of his neck, he lets his heels rest on the warm floorboards, and he looks up at the balcony on the brick house across the street.

There’s a man standing there, framed in the light spilling from the glass door behind him and flanked by flowerpots full of growing herbs and houseplants gone wild on the railing. As if to one-up Remus at his own game, the man sends both arms — toned, slender, tattooed — out to his sides, then up, reaching on his tip toes, arching his back and sending his hips forward. He drops his hands in a huff to the back of his neck, scratching his fingers into his tousled black hair, which falls elegantly around his broad shoulders.He looks down fondly at the big black dog sniffing around near his feet. Remus takes in the sleep-rumpled look of the man’s slightly twisted black tank top and his low-slung black gym shorts. He sees the man shift his gaze to survey the still-darkening sky. His posture is elegant, his build tall and sinewy.

The sky cracks open, shaking Remus from his reverie with rain that falls in slow, fat drops. Under the roof over his porch, Remus manages to close his slack mouth, but he doesn’t tear his eyes from the neighbor who seems not to notice him at all. The dog scampers back inside when the first bolt of lightning severs the sky, followed by a rumble and a sudden downpour. The man turns and goes back indoors, leaving Remus feeling suddenly, inexplicably bereft.

But the man doesn’t go far. He stands, silhouetted in the doorway, looking out. Remus thinks perhaps the man sees him, but he can’t be sure. He peels his eyes from the neighbor when he sips his coffee again. Standing in the mist that rises from the ground around him, Remus watches the droplets bead up on the comically floppy leaves of the elephant ears plants in his concrete pots until the wind makes their flapping look desperate.

When he goes to take a sip from his coffee cup and finds it empty, he turns to go back inside and up the stairs. The coffee tastes indulgent this morning.


	2. Loving Lily

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief history of Remus and Lily's friendship

On Monday, Lily comes by after work. She’s still in her blue scrubs, which makes Remus cringe just a little at the thought of the hospital pathogens that might still be stuck to them. He hugs Lily anyway. 

Lily knocks now more as a warning than a request. More _I’m here_ , than _Can I come in?_ , and that brings him a type of contentment he doesn’t often feel. She’s sort of his only friend. There are other people he’s friendly _with_ at school, people with whom he can grab a drink or feel glad to sit next to in class. But now that his mother is gone, Lily is the only living soul who knows that Remus’s torso is covered with burn scars from the fire when he was twelve. 

No. That’s not quite true. His mother’s sisters know, too. But they’ve not forgiven Remus for going to school in the States. Nevermind that this was precisely what his mother had encouraged him to do. He hadn’t known how ill she’d become, hadn’t come home to say goodbye before it was too late. He believes his aunts are right to be angry with him, hates that half of him is his father, that this father-half won out and allowed him to abandon his mother at the end of her life. 

His father knows all about his marks, too, wherever he is. His father’s work was what had brought Fenrir Grayback to their home with a gasoline tank and a book of matches that night. Remus hadn’t gotten out in time, and his father couldn’t bear to look at the marks on his boy where his own words had brought a villain into their home, brought a flaming beam down onto that scrawny little body, trapped him, hurt him. So his father had made it, what, a month after the attack? They hadn’t even found a permanent place to live yet, the three of them sharing a suite in a residential hotel off the highway. He’d taken their only car. He left them.

So basic living became a monumental challenge to his mother a couple of weeks shy of Remus’s thirteenth birthday, and he knew very well that it was because he hadn’t taken care of himself, hadn’t gotten himself out. Selfish — he’d tried to save his favorite book, _Holes_ , as if he couldn’t pick up another copy from the next Scholastic Book Fair at school, as if he hadn’t already outgrown it. Idiot. It had made him too ugly for his father to bear. It made his mother leave her friends and her life in Iowa to be closer to her sisters, to live in a shamefully crummy cottage in Wales, a place he never forgot was a burden _he’d_ brought on his mother. 

So now there was Lily. Lily, whom Remus hadn’t really meant to befriend. He’d fallen flat on his back on his way into his apartment in his first Midwestern winter since he was a boy. It’s hard to get examined for a cracked rib without revealing one’s chest, so Lily had seen his scars, and she hadn’t looked frightened or disgusted. She hadn’t even winced. She’d teased him for being 30 and sustaining an injury so stereotypical of the elderly. 

“Should we get you a LifeAlert?” she’d asked. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be nice?” 

“Oh, no,” she’d said, mischief in her eyes. “I’m supposed to provide you with healthcare. I’m a healthcare provider, see. You can provide a lot of healthcare without ever being even remotely nice.”

The doctor — a pretty and frightened-looking man — had sucked in air sharply at the sight of Remus’s bare chest, and Lily had looked at him with absolute murder in her eyes and said, “Surely you’ve seen a burn before, Dr. Lockhart.” The doctor had nodded curtly and gone about his business. 

“He’s a joke of a doctor,” Lily had whispered to Remus in Dr. Lockhart’s wake. “I asked a friend of mine, Marlene, to have a look at your X-rays. She’s a resident, too, just not on duty tonight. She’ll be here soon to make sure Lockhart doesn’t try to remove all your ribs to take away the pain.”

Remus chuckled nervously at what he was guessing was an exaggeration, but it wasn’t lost on him that she’d actually called a friend on her night off to protect him. 

“Where’s your accent from?” she’d asked casually. A good bit of history gets woven into the telling of how a man comes to have a Welsh-Midwestern bastard of a speech pattern. 

“It’s a nice accent,” she’d said. No room for dissent. 

Lily isn’t the only one alive who knows about his scars or how they got there. She’s just the only one who never made it seem that the marks were in the way of loving him. 

They had understood each other. Her smile was among the warmest he’d ever known, and she appreciated his dry wit. But they were more than just pals. They trusted each other implicitly, never thought to lie to one another. She knew about his dad. He knew of her sister’s toxic jealousy. She was patient with him in ways that astonished him, so practiced he’d become at hiding his need for any kind of love. 

After his mother died, Lily had given him space and time, never seemed hurt when he needed dark silence more than her company. And then she’d said, “Enough.” A redheaded pillar of strength, she’d never pointed out the problem, but she’d taken away some bottles and filled his fridge with those fizzy fruit-flavored waters, saying that she liked them and wanted them around when she came by to visit. She’d sat still next to him on the couch while he dialed the number she’d found for him. 

Remus had no trouble believing that he was trading in a weekly bender for a therapeutic hour but he couldn’t wrap his head around his lack of embarrassment to have her there when he told the woman who answered the phone, “Hi. Yes. My name is Remus Lupin, and I think I need to speak to a therapist. Can you help me set that up?” He remains grateful that she didn’t reach for his hand that day, instead letting it seem too ordinary to need extra support but giving extra support anyway. 

So now, at least once a week, they eat dinner like a family, although neither of them has ever suggested anything remotely romantic about their love. Are they dating? Remus feels foolish to have to ask. They don’t kiss. They would kiss if they were dating, right? Of course they would. They’re not dating. 

_Why_ are they not dating? This question hovers in the dark air between him and his bedroom ceiling each night, but he never asks it aloud. 

He’s never dated anyone. He’s drunkenly made out with women in bars, but that only serves to feed his sense of his own selfishness -- he lets them think this might be the beginning of something when he’s sure it’s not. He’s so miserable and ashamed during those encounters that he doesn’t even know why he seeks them out anymore. They had started as a way to avoid being a never-kissed 20-something, and he keeps at it on occasion to remind himself that he’s alive and to feel less alone in the world. They usually have the opposite effect.

Lily is now the only person within spitting distance of his heart, and he worries for her. Dr. Lockhart’s reaction to his scars was evidence enough that any near-intimacy he might build with another person would be ruined as soon as they made it past first base. (What even _were_ all the bases?) And Lockhart didn’t know the half of it. Didn’t know that the same selfishness that let Lyle Lupin walk out on his wife and child made up half of Remus’s own DNA. This Lyle Lupin selfishness is what made him go back for his book, made him leave his mother in Wales so he could study. He’s taken extreme care with Lily’s heart, knowing that a heart as good and strong as Lily’s should never be subjected to the real darkness in his own. Slowly but surely he’s tried to let Lily know all of this, but she seems not to notice. 

Tonight they make spaghetti together, fill the little apartment with laughter and chatter and the clinking of silverware and glasses. 

On the couch, a glass and a half of red wine past dinner, Remus tries to ask casually whether Lily has ever noticed the balcony garden across the street. (She hasn’t.) He tries to be coy about explaining what he’s recently noticed: houseplants living happily on the railing, these really cool homemade raised beds with herbs in them, this adorable fluff of a dog, oh, and the most gloriously beautiful specimen of a man ever to grace this bag of rotten vegetables we call a planet. 

“I don’t get it,” she says. “He’s been your neighbor for _years_ and you’re just seeing him now?” 

Of course she knows Remus was away without Hope that first summer, trying to make amends in Wales. “This year,” he explains, “so far, I dunno — nothing’s been too interesting. I guess I’ve mostly faced the house. I’m just weeding.” 

Her face softens as she realizes why Remus has been facing inward rather than outward. 

“How have you been feeling?”

“Good. Fine.” He waves a lazy hand to swat way the question. 

She studies him, a sweet little furrow forming between her brows. 

“Honestly?” he says quietly. “I don’t ask myself that question much anymore. The answer’s been kind of depressing for too long.”

She looks at him like she’s waiting for him to go on or take it back. He says, “I’m just fine, and I figure I’ll know if I’m not fine.” 

“Christ, Lupin.” She rolls her eyes at him and he is surprised to be shaken out of his candor. “Don’t you think you’re a little young to be so dead inside?” She laughs kindly and calls him Eeyore. 

“Hey — you know how I feel when you use pieces of English culture against me.” 

“I know it, but I don’t understand it, Welshboy. He’s _English_.” 

“Wales is a lot more English than Wisconsin is, you who’ve swapped any chance of a literary culture for hunks of cheese that squeak when you bite them.” 

“Sweet little Lupin, you’re so cute when you’re wrong about cheese curds.” She ruffles his hair like a big sister. “You really are a lot like Eeyore, though.” 

“Maybe.” 

“Does _anything_ bring you joy?”

“I laugh a lot when I’m with you, don’t I?”

“Sure.” 

“And, um . . . I really like coffee. I don’t ever feel too bad when I’m in my garden. I . . . it’s just still hard. I’m working on it. I’m just quiet.” 

She wraps his hand in hers, a warm gesture despite her very cold fingers and gives a sad and knowing nod. “I caught you looking all moony over whatever you were reading when I got here,” she offers. 

His face lights a little. “Whitman — it’s. He’s. I’ve never read anything like it before.” 

“I think you were clutching your pearls.” 

“You are very mean,” he says fondly. 

“And bossy.” She wrenches the afghan from under his legs and tosses it to the ground, saying, “Gimme a pillow and a bigger blanket than this thing. I’m sleeping over.”

His nerves freeze him from the inside and his heart runs away from him. Something seems to clutch his stomach with tentacles. Redness rises to his cheeks.

“Lily, I, um —”

“Oh, Remus, not like _that_.” Her eyes go wide and she chuckles at him. “God, I’d be a little more coy if I were trying to jump your bones.”

Relief. Then, confusion.

She sees his puzzlement and answers it: “You just shouldn’t be alone so much, sweetheart. It’s not good for you.” 

She pats his cheek half-jokingly and half-intentionally. Like a friend and also like a mother. 

“I’m sleeping on your couch so I can make you coffee in the morning. That’s two sources of joy at one time. My shift doesn’t start till ten.”

Remus shakes his head in mock annoyance and goes to the linen closet for some sheets. He’s glad for a reason to leave the room, an excuse to hide the unbidden tears that have filled his eyes. He doesn’t inquire too deeply after their source. 

In his own bed, later, he thinks of Lily. He’s glad she’s there, glad someone else is breathing the stuffy air of his apartment with him. He loves Lily, but that doesn’t surprise him. He’s touched to be reminded that she loves him, too. 

He knows she’s pretty — beautiful, really. Her hair is a rich and glossy red, her eyes kind and fierce and improbably green, her freckles cute, her body — was Lily fit? — he thought about it. Yes, of course. 

Why had he panicked, then, when she declared that she was staying? Didn’t he _want_ Lily to want to stay over? 

As if to prove himself wrong for panicking, he tries to keep her in his mind when he slips his hand past the waistband of his shorts. But it is shame more than arousal that quickens his pulse. She’s _right there_ on the other side of this door and here he is trying to get off to her imagined nude form. But maybe more embarrassing, even in the close darkness of his own bed, himself his only witness, is that he _can’t_ get off to the idea of Lily. 

When he finally comes, it is the neighbor’s languid stretching, his sleep-tousled hair, his shadowy stubble that appear before Remus’s eyes. He’s as powerless to stop these images as he is to stop the wet heat now splattering his abdomen, the trembling in his hands, the panicked tattoo of his heart. 

He’d been trying to fall asleep more easily, but he’s succeeded only in making a mess of himself and building sleep into a precipice from which he is afraid to jump into his ungoverned mind. He doesn’t want to know what else is in there. 


	3. Powers of Observation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A lot of neighbor-creeping and an encounter

Remus smells coffee before he even opens his eyes; Lily keeps promises.

Their friendship, it turns out, works as well at sunup as sundown. They boil a couple of eggs, slice a few radishes, toast and butter some bread, stepping drowsily around each other in companionable silence in the tiny kitchen.

They bring their mugs and plates down the narrow stairs to the front porch. Lily takes Remus’s usual perch on the top step by the post to the left of the door while Remus moves the potted lemon tree out of the way of the post on the right. They lean against the columns and face each other, smiling softly in the early light.

A clean breeze touches them gently, the air still light and cool from the just-gone night. The sounds: a few birds chirping, the rare car, the peeling hardboiled eggs, the footfalls of early runners, and then, a metallic jingle and the _shook_ of a door closing. Their eyes follow the noise across the street to where it originated; they see the big black dog first, on a leash, then the neighbor, the one from the storm. The man and his dog walk slowly from the front door to the sidewalk, turning away from Remus’s house. They pause a moment while the dog sniffs at something, and the man — sporting sunglasses, a gray t-shirt, rolled jeans, black leather sandals — pulls his hair into a lazy bun. Man and dog look at each other, heads tilted in with interest, and they seem to decide something together. They resume their walk, never looking over at Remus and Lily, who are both frozen, watching the man’s long legs carry him easily out of sight.

“That’s him,” Lily whispers to her coffee cup, reverently.

Remus only raises his eyebrows knowingly.

“His hair is _black_.”

Remus nods.

“Okay,” she breathes.

“Okay,” he agrees.

He doesn’t know what they’ve agreed to, but it seems settled.

Some silent minutes later, Lily says, “Cute dog.”

Remus Lupin _giggles_.

Like he’s researching, Remus finds himself taking notice of where his neighbor is and when. He notices that the guy walks his dog three times a day when it’s nice out. Notices that he rides a yellow bike with narrow tires and that, leaned forward over the handlebars, his shoulders and back are lean and strong and elegant as he soars down the hill of their street.

Does Remus wish, in observing this, that his own muscles stretched and defined themselves this way? Maybe. But this is more admiration than envy.

He notices how quietly the man speaks to his dog, how the dog seems to share his easy mannerisms. The man carries a messenger bag on a lot of the walks, and Remus wonders urgently what’s inside and where they’re going.

The door that leads from inside the man’s apartment to his balcony is propped open in fair weather. The dog sometimes drifts onto the balcony alone, sniffing the breeze with his eyes closed. Sometimes in the evenings, the man sits on a lawn chair among his plants, almost hidden behind the raised beds he’s built.

Remus knows he built them because he watched the man finish one. This was a glorious afternoon. Remus was reading on the porch, and he held almost completely still to avoid being noticed, as if he might scare off the man and all of his carpentry equipment, while the stranger made decisive cuts with a table saw and pounded nails with practiced precision. Everything he did was so like a dance; Remus had never known that a person could do these tasks with grace.

He sees the man smoke from behind his plants, only occasionally. Cigarettes? Cigars? Weed? Remus doesn’t know, but he wants to know. And he wants to join. One night he thinks he smells the telltale skunkiness of weed, and he surprises himself by replenishing his own stock the next day, buying fresh rolling papers. He’s unsure what motivates this move, but he’s glad for the calm that drapes heavily over him in the dark on his front stoop. Somewhere beneath the surface of his mind, he hopes that the smoke will drift up and across the street, that maybe he’ll be seen.

Remus notices the man’s movements so intently that he accidentally learns to distinguish the sound of his beat-up pickup truck from he other noisy cars he hears. In fact, Remus is embarrassed to realize, he can hear the neighbor coming and going even when he’s in the shower. Over the sound of the water and the fan, he hears the old engine whinny to life and roar away. He scrubs at his face a little more intensely to wash away the unreasonable feeling of emptiness he feels when he knows his stranger has left.

He does much of his noticing from his chair in the sitting room, his favorite room inside the apartment. It looks out at the front yard and an ash tree that makes him feel he’s in a tree house. The room contains houseplants and hundreds of books, but — rather pointedly — no TV. The wallsare a soothing green. His record player lives here. 

Other details he notices from his garden. The result is that the front beds, from which he can see across the street, are getting disproportionate attention. In fact, they flourish — healthy foliage, no weeds, something blooming each week of the summer. 

He also takes more care in his appearances on his perch on the top step of his front porch each morning, bringing with him coffee and a book. He no longer drinks his porch coffee in his slept-in underthings.

He feels awake for the first time in a long time, performing with renewed energy the activities that most feel like _him_. He reads and writes and gardens and listens to music as if in offering. This, despite his confusion as to why the neighbor has the power to bring him into the sun.

In his mind, he assembles a list of questions:

What’s his _job_? (Remus tries not to think it odd that the stranger is home during the day. After all, so is Remus.)

What is his name?

What is his dog’s name?

Why didn’t Remus notice him before?

Does he see Remus?

Has he noticed an uptick in Remus’s attention to him?

And what happens on _Saturdays_?

Saturdays are the greatest and most intriguing. Remus is an earlier riser than most, even when he longs to sleep in. He is on the porch, collar bones kissing the sun, sipping coffee, reading Whitman, by 8 o’clock. And by 8:30, the neighbor has begun to load the back of his truck. On Saturdays the neighbor wears boots and a black felt hat with a broad brim and a colorful woven band. It is a ridiculous hat, and it somehow suits him.

The first time he saw it happen, Remus gaped openly, filled with a horror he recognized but didn’t understand. He watched the man load cardboard boxes from the garage, a dog bed, some sort of cart on bicycle wheels, two tall collapsable chairs, a bag full of — was it clothing? — and he panicked. Was his stranger _moving_? The stranger stooped to lift his dog with great tenderness into the truck, then climbed in after him, and sped noisily off in the direction of downtown.

That Saturday Remus had sulked confusedly, digging absently in the dirt of his side-yard flowerbed, as if to prove to himself that he, too, had other things to do, that he wasn’t suddenly both alone _and_ lonesome. In reality, he’d realized how much the idea of this neighbor had been keeping him company. He’d been too relieved when his secret companion returned to feel embarrassment at his daylong hollowness.

The tall stranger had unloaded all of his cargo into the garage, returned to his apartment through the side door, then exited promptly through the front door to walk his dog.

Now Remus watches the Saturday morning show with only curiosity and admiration. He’s a bit more discrete than his panic had allowed him to be that first weekend. He’s still desperate to know where they’re going.

Another day, Remus sees him walking with a sketch pad, and suddenly he knows: his neighbor is an _artist_. _That’s_ what he’s doing on Saturdays — he’s selling his _art_. _That’s_ why he doesn’t have a regular schedule. As if he’s always known this somewhere beneath his consciousness, he looks up at the windows above the man’s balcony, a sight that has been available to him for all the time he’s lived here, and sees an easel, plain as day. Something inside his mind flatlines, and he goes indoors, but aimlessly.

Remus is in his garden one afternoon, a couple of weeks into July. He is coated in sunblock, bug spray, sweat, and dirt. The dirt always finds a way to define the outlines of the scar across his nose and cheeks. It gets into the crinkles of his eyes, brightening the blue of his irises. He has sweat through his peachy orange t-shirt in a ring around his neck and — he’d bet his next glass of ice water on it — in a growing dark patch at the small of his back. He’s planting ornamental grasses, late in the season so he could buy them on sale. He becomes aware of how much he must resemble an animal stalking through the savannah, hunched as he is on all fours, rustling the tall grasses around him, only when he hears an amused, “Hello.”

He looks up, smiling already, wired to be polite even in the face of his embarrassment, and then his eyes go wide at the sight of his stranger, who has stopped on _Remus’s_ side of the street, who wears a genuine smile that looks as soft and comfortable as his black tank top, and whose dog is sniffing around Remus’s potted herbs but not digging at them or biting them at all, just sniffing. The stranger takes a step off the sidewalk into Remus’s front yard.

“Oh — hello.” Remus moves as if to stand, sends his weight back onto his knees and toes, straightens up from his waist. But before he can climb to his feet, the man, whose eyes are _light gray,_ as if that is a color that human eyes can be, nods in what feels like approval at Remus, simply looks at the dog, and the pair continues on their way, crossing toward their own home and disappearing inside.

Dizzy and filled with longing to reverse and replay the moment, Remus looks helplessly at the ground around him, believing maybe the secret to time travel or to summoning neighbors is lying in the mulch of his flowerbed. He goes back to his work, but more slowly now, thinking he might manifest the neighbor’s return by doing the exact same things in the same order by some happy accident.

When he can no longer pretend to need to keep working, he stands and brushes the mulch from his knees. He peels off his garden gloves and tucks their wrist-ends into his back pocket, mopping his brow with a red bandana before bending to gather up his tools. He steps carefully out of the garden, mindful not to crush any plants underfoot, and chances a glance at the neighbor’s balcony when he reaches the grass.

He’s up there, the neighbor is, cutting dead leaves and spent flowers off his plants. He looks up from his work and down at Remus as if he sensed the attention from across the street. He smiles warmly and waves. Remus’s blood clamors in its vessels, and he waves dumbly, smiles the smile of social recovery after a small embarrassment, almost apologetic. Left with nothing else to do, he turns back toward his garden to examine his afternoon’s labor.

He waters his new plants to welcome their roots into the soil, feeling a glow of fondness for them. He does not permit himself to look back up and across the road.

That night, in his bed, Lily is far from his mind. When his pleasure blinds him momentarily, the dazzle comes from a pair of pale gray eyes, from the gleam of sun on waves of black hair. He pants there a moment, trying to blink the sight away. But he cannot help replaying the day’s encounters as he shuffles himself to the bathroom to clean up, as he lies back down in bed.

He feels unfamiliar to himself, confused, vaguely ashamed.

He is also giddy.


	4. A Wolf, a Star, and a Dog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meeting and an outing

Now they are on waving terms. If Remus sits on his porch. If the stranger walks his dog. If Remus works in his garden. If the stranger pulls saw horses onto his balcony and starts measuring, cutting, hammering. If Remus comes out to get the mail. If the stranger waters his plants shirtlessly. They wave at each other. Remus wills him to visit again, knows that this time he would say, “I’m Remus. What’s your name?” But he doesn’t come back.

Remus also begins to notice visitors. On occasion, there’s a guy on a bike. He looks to be around their age, almost always in gym shorts and a white V-neck and running shoes, like he is prepared to break into sport at any moment. His black hair is unruly, like he’s slept on it. He wears round glasses, and he’s always eating something. To Remus’s chagrin, he sees his neighbor embrace this man, sees and hears them laughing together on the balcony, sees the visitor even walk the stranger’s dog.

He cannot decide why this vexes him.

Just once there is a man who looks much like the neighbor, but with close-cut hair and a clean shave. He pulls up in a dark, elegant car that looks out of place in their neighborhood and makes an alien laser sound to indicate its alarm and its worth as the man walks toward the front door. He wears a summer suit, stylish. He’s more delicate in build than the neighbor, slighter, and with more tightness in his movements. He pulls absently at his cuffs on the front step. Remus notices that this visitor does not receive a warm embrace. He only stays ten minutes.

The next morning there are women. One is in her 40s, black hair streaked with gray, and she’s trailed by a teenager who could be her miniature except for her pink hair. The girl’s feet seem adolescently too big for her body. She plays with the dog on the balcony and knocks over a flowerpot. The mother is tall and elegant, calm in her face and mannerisms. Remus guesses she and the neighbor are related by the way they mirror each other’s posture.

That week the bike guy begins to appear more often, but he sees less of the neighbor himself. Bike Guy brings takeout containers, dangling on the handlebars of his bike. He walks the dog more often. By the weekend, though, Remus sees both men outside, smiling and laughing again.

Although he is still irritated by Bike Guy’s presence, he feels relieved to see the strain disappear from his stranger’s face.

On a Monday, Lily comes by after work, and they sit on the porch with their white wine glasses sweating and their pre-dinner crackers crumbling onto their shirts. He tells her his observations of the neighbor and his company, and she listens without enough interest. He doesn’t understand.

“What do you think _happened_? What did that fancy guy _say_?”

“I really have no idea, but I’m interested in why you care so much.” Remus is prepared to hear again that he’s alone too often, but her face is brighter than all that. She smirks and raises a brow. He’s afraid to ask her what that look is about, and is glad not to have to, because Bike Guy seems to float uphill with ease at just that moment. He locks his bike to a railing on the back step, rips off his helmet, freeing his almost artfully messy hair, and lets himself in.

Remus whispers, “That’s —”

“ _James Potter_.” Lily looks stricken.

“You know him?”

“He works at the hospital.” She is whispering.

“A doctor?”

“A nurse.” Her irritation at Remus’s assumption brings her back to reality. “He’s a nurse, and I see him around a lot, and he’s always joking around on the job in ways that a woman never could, _which I hate_ , but he works mostly with children, and they all seem to love him, and so do their parents, which is —” she cuts herself off, takes a deep breath, and finishes by repeating the pertinent information: “I work with him. His name is James.”

Remus smiles into his glass of wine and, after a delicate sip and an exaggerated noise of refreshment, says, “Who’s too interested now?”

After dinner, Remus and Lily return to the porch for some air. They’d chosen to prepare a meal that required the oven, and no matter how good a summer tart tastes, 87 degrees is too damn hot for eight-thirty PM.

In the fading light, they see Bike Guy and the neighbor and the dog tumble out the front door together. The neighbor walks with his companion to where his bike is locked up, moseying so that the dog can sniff around at his leisure. Lily draws in a sharp breath like something has scared her, and Remus looks over at her in surprise just as she calls, “ _James_.”

This is how Remus finds himself standing in the neighbor’s driveway while Lily talks to James, and the only thing for him to do is speak to the impossible neighbor, whose gray eyes shine in the dark, of course, and who seems amused by the turn of events.

“I guess I’m your neighbor,” Remus says. He holds out a hand, and when the man takes it, he says, “Remus Lupin.”

“Woof woof,” says the neighbor with a grin that is _evil_ and wonderful, both.

“Woof woof?”

“Yeah, don’t both of those names mean wolf?” Understanding dawns on Remus, and his double embarrassment — that he’d misheard the joke and that his stranger was laughing at him already — make sweat bead up on his forehead.

“They do.” He tries to sound cool, anything to mask the disappointment.

“I’m one to talk. I’m named after my own damn dog.”

“You’re — What?”

“Sirius Black.” He renews the energy in their handshake, and Remus realizes they’ve been hand-in-hand this whole time. He takes his hand back and doesn’t know what to say.

Sirius goes on, “Sirius, like the Dog Star. Canis Major.” He gestures vaguely to the heavens. “And Black, like the color. So. I’m just him, I guess.” He drops his hand toward the dog, smiles sheepishly

“A wolf and a dog.”

“A wolf and a _star_. And a dog.” He looks down at the dog, who is rather enormous and ursine up close.

“And who’s this?” Remus crouches to put his face at eye level with the dog, and the dog leans his head into Remus's outstretched hand.

“This is Padfoot.”

Remus looks up to Sirius with a curious tilt of the head. 

Sirius explains, “Look at his paws. They’re about as big as dinner plates, but they are _silent_.”

Remus smiles fondly and scratches behind both Padfoot’s ears. “I like him.”

“He likes you, too. I’ll never be able to keep him out of your yard, now.”

“Well.” Remus cannot stop the words from saying themselves. “There are worse things. Than a dog and a star dropping by.”

Sirius’s smile is conspiratorial. He keeps his eyes locked on Remus’s when he says, “James, stop flirting with that poor woman and meet my neighbor. Remus, my best friend and kind-of-brother, James.”

Remus weeds the front bed on a muggy Thursday about a week after meeting Sirius. Cursing himself for getting a late start, he rests on his haunches to wipe his sweaty brow. His grubby hand streaks mud across his forehead. He complains on behalf of his knees as he stands and walks toward the stoop to gulp water from the glass he's left in the shade.

He wipes his mouth with his forearm, panting and squinting in the general direction of the garden that is now only half overrun by creeping charlie.

He hears Sirius’s truck roar to life, and he fights the urge to watch him drive away.

But the noise doesn’t recede. It just rumbles for long seconds until Remus thinks, _Christ, I am hopeless,_ and looks over to see Sirius’s rakish grin over top of Padfoot’s head, his gray eyes gleaming behind the aviator shades he’s tilted down his nose.

“Looks hot,” he hollers over the engine. His teeth, Remus notices, literally glimmer. _How_.

Remus makes sure to run through his rational brain an important detail, that Sirius did not say, “ _You_ look hot.”

Remus Lupin, Ph.D candidate in English, nods dumbly, all language lost to him. He wants to say, “You, too,” although that wouldn’t make any sense. He wants to say, “How are you not sweating?” Although, from the looks of him, he _is_ , sweating. He just looks _glorious_ sweaty. He wants to say, “I’m used to needing cold showers now that you’ve begun gardening with no shirt.”

He actually says, “Yeah,” and then winces at his own lameness.

“Well, get in,” Sirius says as if the two have plans or even know more than each other’s names. He reaches across Padfoot, who is panting and splayed on the bench seat, and throws open the passenger side door.

Remus hears himself ask, “Where are we going?”

“Somewhere to get the mud off your face and keep you and Padfoot from getting heat stroke.”

He ruffles Padfoot’s ears, but the dog stays prone in the shade, too hot to respond to such silliness.

Lupin looks down at himself, mud and grass stuck to his knees in his oversized Levi’s, mud caked into the soles of his boots, sweat-darkened rings around the neck and arm holes of his cut off and faded black t-shirt. He moves his right hand to cover the scars, pink from sun exposure, that snake down his left arm toward his elbow.

“I — Let me change quick. I don’t want to track mud all over your truck.” He moves toward the door of his house, thinking something about riding in cars with strange men, wondering how it’s possible such a true idiot as him hasn’t been murdered yet, but Sirius interrupts.

“She’s seen worse, I promise.” He lifts an eyebrow. “Come on. Padfoot’s desperate.”

Remus tries idiotically to wipe the dirt from his hands onto his jeans, but the mess just seems to multiply. He goes to the front door and pulls the handle to see that it’s locked, pats his pocket to confirm that his keys are on his person, and he walks like a stranger across his own front yard to climb into Sirius Black’s noisy pickup truck.

Sirius flashes yet another smile as he works some gear-shifting magic and the truck roars up the hill and around a corner. 

Remus gives him what he thinks is a very generous seven minutes (he becomes almost physically itchy at five) before asking, as casually as he can, “So, where are we off to?”

Sirius keeps his eyes on the road. His smile is easy. “How often do you get in cars with strangers?”

“This is my first time.” Remus’s cheeks redden as he realizes what he’s said.

“Well, I’ll be tender.” Sirius’s answer is quick, and surprisingly quiet. Remus notices the word “tender” where he expected something coarser.

He believes he will die of the silence that follows this exchange.To survive, he asks his question again, and Sirius reaches down between his seat and the door and extracts a map. “A state park on Lake Michigan,” he says. “I’m not sure how to get there. How are you at navigating?”

“I love maps,” Remus exhales deeply, relieved to have something to do, to be even somewhat in control of what’s happening to him. 

Sirius points to the general vicinity of the destination on the partially folded map that he places in Remus’s grubby hands.

They take mostly back roads. After those first debonair non-answers, Sirius proves to be an easy travel companion, pleasant to talk to, unafraid of the occasional silence, a proponent of open windows. After cooling off in the breeze a bit, Padfoot grows livelier. He stands on the seat, taller than either of the men beside him, and throws his front paws on Remus’s lap to stick his head out the window. At a four-way stop between tiny towns, Padfoot spots a stray cat in the grass along the road and barks happily.

Remus says calmly, “Padfoot, we do not bark at ditch tigers.”

“ _Ditch tigers?_ ” Sirius looks overjoyed.

“Stray cats along the roadside? Do we not call them ditch tigers here?”

“I’ve never heard that phrase in my life.”

“Maybe it’s an Iowa thing.” He considers a moment. “Or a Wales thing. My mom used to say it.”

“Is _that_ why I can’t place your accent? Iowa and Wales?”

Remus finds himself telling happily about his childhood, even while smoothing over the great singed scar that was their move back to his mother’s hometown across the ocean.

Sirius listens, asks questions but doesn’t pry. Remus chuckles at himself when he tells Sirius about a calf he believed was his friend for a brief period in his childhood and to whom he used to read _Charlotte’s Web_ aloud, over the fence between his back yard and the cow pasture of the neighboring farm, believing that his friend might get something out of the story. And then he seems to catch himself too relaxed, dominating the conversation. “I’m sorry — I’m just blathering.”

Sirius rests his right hand on Padfoot’s head, itching absently behind his soft ears. “Please — I like learning about you.” Something sad has crept into his voice.

Remus looks out the window and shifts in his chair. Sirius says, quietly, “You said earlier, your mom _used to_ call cats ditch tigers…” He lets the question ask itself.

“She died.” Remus says this — he always says this — too matter-of-factly. He wants this part of the conversation over as soon as possible. People ask about his mother, and then when they find out that she’s dead, they look at him like _they_ killed her, or at least informed him of the fact of her deadness and now require his absolution. He always winds up comforting the questioner, and he resents it.

“Recently?”

“About a year ago.”

A moment passes.

“She sounds wonderful in your stories.”

And that’s it. No, _Oh, God, I’m so sorry_. No, _Oh no! I shouldn’t have brought it up!_ Nothing. Sirius just heard what Remus said about his mother, and that’s all.

The lack of horror from Sirius seems to invite Remus to say more. The only things left to say take on the air of confession. “She had cancer. I didn’t know it was so bad, and I didn’t rush back to Wales. She was — I — I missed her. She died before the end of the semester. And I wasn’t there.”

They pass the sign at the entrance to the park. Remus notices that Sirius just waves at the ranger in the pay station, and she looks at the yearlong parks pass stuck to his windshield with a nod. They are almost two hours from home, suddenly in a new eco system — sand dunes covered in grass, ragged-looking evergreens — and suddenly 20 degrees cooler than their neighborhood had been, approaching the shore of a great, cold lake, and Remus has just given Sirius evidence of his worst quality. He thinks of how awful the ride home will be, now that Sirius knows Remus isn’t worth his time.

Sirius is quiet a moment as the truck winds around the narrow road inside the park.

“Maybe,” he says, “she was trying to protect you from seeing her that way.”

In all the excruciating hours since her death, Remus has never once considered that his mother kept her illness from him for his own good. Always, always, he’s believed that she must have tried to tell him, that he must not have listened well enough, that he’d failed her when she needed him.

He feels a warm splash on the back of his hand before he realizes what’s happening. His face grows hot with shame, and he can’t talk down the tears welling up and spilling over, tumbling down his cheeks and onto his hands and his shirt and his lap. He is astonished at his own loss of control, tries to turn his body to face the window. Padfoot notices the sudden movement and stands, walks his front paws onto Remus’s lap again, searching for his tear-streaked face.

If Sirius notices Remus’s sudden breakdown, he doesn’t say a word about it. He just sighs and says, “There she is,” as they crest a hill and see the lake sprawled out in blue before them. The sight of it does something to connect Remus to the body, the truck, the planet he inhabits, and he is able to tuck aside whatever this feeling is by the time Sirius kills the engine. 

When he stands beside the truck, laughing gulls, collapsing waves, and a cool sky occupy his sudden empty places, and he follows Sirius mindlessly to find a place on the unpeopled beach.


	5. Beach Bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A skinny-dipping Sirius Black

Remus walks half a step behind Sirius, who carries his mysterious messenger bag across his tall chest and walks easily in search of the right patch of vacant beach. Padfoot seems to make the actual selection, running ahead, barking and splashing, chasing an unlucky couple of gulls, before stopping cold, turning toward the water, and dropping low on his front paws, tail wagging vigorously.

When the men catch up with him, he sits, and his still-wagging tail throws sand from side to side. Sirius pulls a faded red beach towel from his bag and lays it out parallel to the shoreline, at the base of the dune that rises up tall behind them. The grass atop the dune casts dancing shadows. Sirius sets his bag off to one side and pulls a bottle of sunblock from it. He kicks off his sandals, hands the bottle to Remus, and flashes a hint of canine at him until it’s obscured by his white t-shirt coming up over his head.

He turns his back to Remus, who is sure the depth of facial blushing he is right now experiencing must be terminal, and says, “Would you mind?”

Remus cannot actually say words. He just pops open the bottle and winces at the undignified sound of the lotion puttering from it into his hands. He does not breathe. He tries to focus on rubbing the _lotion_ , not the back it’s sinking into, but this technicality is of no use. Sirius’s back is warm, his muscles firm but pliant. He reaches behind him to move the wisps of hair that have fallen from his bun out of Remus’s way, and he tilts his head slowly to each side, stretching a long curve from shoulder to jaw. Each movement shifts the muscles under his skin, whose tan is even, surface smooth. Remus pffts more lotion into his palm and presses both hands between Sirius’s broad shoulder blades, smudging white downward toward the top of his shorts, into the curve at the small of his back, outward toward his sides and down the architectural planes of his lats. He is careful to reach — but not dip even a fingertip below — Sirius’s low-slung waistband.

He swallows violently, coughs a bit, sucks in a deep breath, and mumbles, “That should do.”

“Thanks — you need a hand?” Sirius’s voice is sunshine. He gestures toward the bottle.

“What? Oh. No. Thanks.”

“You sure? I don’t mind.”

“No, it’s okay. Maybe in a little while,” he lies. “I’ll, um, I’ll keep my shirt on for now.”

The splat of more sunblock into his hand punctuates his mumbling, and he smears the sunscreen onto his face, praying to hide. He scrubs his cheeks messily with his palms, then uses his fingertips to rub lotion into the skin of his nose, especially his scar there. Sirius lets his hair out of its bun while he watches Remus smear sunblock into his arms and the back of his neck. Remus stoops to put the bottle on the towel near Sirius’s bag, not wanting to place it back in the bag itself for fear of invading Sirius’s space. When he straightens back up, Sirius looks at his face and takes a step toward him.

Sirius reaches out and holds him steady, left hand on Remus’s shoulder, and uses the outside of his angular right thumb to trace along Remus’s eyebrow.

“Missed a spot,” he says, voice low.

His hands suddenly frame Remus’s face, thumbs at his ears, the rest of Sirius’s fingers cradling his jaw and reaching to the tender hollow at the base of his skull. He looks straight ahead into Remus’s eyes, and Remus’s heart becomes mentholated. Sirius pulls Remus down slightly and presses a kiss — firm, warm — into the center of his forehead. Remus shuts his eyes gently.

And then it is over. He pats Remus’s cheek as if he is a small child, says, “Mmm, Coppertone,” and snorts as he turns away.

Remus blinks and gapes.

“I’ve always been more of a Banana Boat guy, myself, but this was all that James had for the stealing when I needed it.” As he speaks, he unfastens the button and pulls down the zipper of his rolled black jeans. They fall in a huff at his ankles and he steps out of them, heedless of the sand that might find its way into their creases. Gray boxer-briefs. He stoops for the sunblock and rubs it absently over his chest and arms and face.

Remus cannot control his eyes, and he cannot keep up. He misses a beat before looking out at the water for safety, asking, “Do you steal from James often?”

“I don’t think either of us would _really_ call it stealing. We don’t live together anymore, but we still share most of our stuff. Except the gym shorts.” He shakes his head. “Gym shorts all the time for James Potter — I can’t participate in that.”

“You called him a ‘sort-of brother’ before. What’s that mean?”

“I’ll tell you. I will. But first, I have to greet this lovely lake.” As if he is the first man on the earth, Sirius walks his tall bones and long muscles smoothly toward the waves until they lap at his toes.

Remus is defenseless. He must watch. An animated statue against three broad brush strokes — sand, water, sky — there is only Sirius in all this earth. Even Remus seems to have disappeared.

Sirius tosses his hair behind him, clasps his hands above his head and reaches up without jutting his ribs forward. He becomes taller. His muscles look glad to serve him. His hands sketch a grand circle as they fall outward and down to his sides. With a thumb hooked into either side of the waistband of his undershorts, he pulls them down and off. The whole act seems to be one languid movement: crouching and standing again, stepping out of the shorts, all with intolerable grace. All of his movements, Remus thinks, look like they _feel_ good. He tosses this last scrap of his clothing behind him without looking and walks slowly into the water.

Remus sees the curve of his calves as they begin to disappear in the water, his slender thighs, his smooth round white cheeks, his narrow hips. He knows he has to look away. A man should look away. He has to look away. He has to.

He can’t.

His breath is audible, pulse quick.

And then, water halfway up his thighs, Sirius seems to become a part of the lake. He swings his arms forward above his forehead and dives from where he stands, disappearing into an incoming wave.

While he is underwater, Remus’s eyes hunt for him, scanning the surface, yearning. Sirius explodes out of the water, 20 feet out from where he dove, howling happily at the cold.

Remus catches up to himself. Sound returns to him — birds, Sirius splashing _,_ Padfoot wuffling and barking. He feels the sun warm and the breeze cool. He sees a boat somewhere in the distance — they are not the only humans. And he notices with hot embarrassment the new tightness at the front of his jeans. He moves to the towel, lays himself out, face down, perpendicular to the towel and the water, letting his lower half sprawl in the hot sand toward the water, his chest resting on the scruffy-soft fabric that smells of detergent — and cradles his face in his arms, still streaked in mud from his garden, in the sand above the towel. The soles of his feet feel the breeze off the water. He hears Sirius chattering with Padfoot, hears splashing, hears the grass rustling on the other side of their dune, hears Sirius _singing_. Just once, he chances a look back over his shoulder, and he sees Sirius in profile, in a game of tug-of-war with Padfoot over a long stick of driftwood.

He wakes to a drip-drip-drip of frigid water and groans at Padfoot with his eyes still shut in the dark nest of his arms.

“Wow — blaming the dog with absolutely no evidence. Padfoot defies stereotypes, Remus. You should really get to know him.”

Remus turns to see Sirius grinning down at him, blocking the sun, face framed by wild ropes of black hair, dripping on him. Water runs over Sirius’s shoulders, down his chest and abdomen, where a faint line of dark hair leads to his hands, which hold his balled-up shorts over his crotch.

Remus’s eyes go wide and Sirius laughs.

“I’m afraid you’re lying on our only towel.”

Remus is on his feet in an instant, averting his eyes, blindly offering the towel. Sirius wraps it around his waist and tosses his underwear in the pile of his other clothes.

“Sorry to steal your bed,” he says.

“It’s important to clothe the naked.”

“Yes, and also, it’s time for you to get in the water. It’s not safe for me to swim alone, Remus. And even if you’re not still sweating like a, like a…a _lot_ , you’re still all muddy. You’ll really make a mess of the truck like that, if you don’t rinse off.”

“You’re _shameless_.” Remus can’t train his face to seriousness. “I’m not swimming in this ice bath.”

“Oh, please. It’s refreshing! It’s great once you get used to it.”

“Not a chance. Sorry about your truck.”

Sirius heaves a great sigh. “I really didn’t want it to come to this…”

“Come to what?”

And Sirius is _on top of him_ , physically, in the sand, and he is _freezing_. Remus loses his breath. He _shrieks_. Sirius rubs his wet hair into the crook of his neck, keeping his voice even through the struggle, “See? Now, that’s not so bad,” and “Now you really _do_ need to hop in and rinse off — mud’s one thing, but you are just covered in sand. That’ll make a real mess, Remus.”

Remus tries to wriggle free, tries for politeness to stave off whatever wild thing is scratching at the inside of his rib cage, the part of him — shockingly large — that _loves_ this. “Would you get _off_ me?”

“ _Sorry._ ” Sirius rolls off him and flashes a shit-eating grin. “I don’t know what came _over_ me.”

“Good _grief_ ,” Remus’s laugh gives away mock annoyance. He stands and dusts the wet sand from his arms, his torso, his jeans. “God, _fine._ ”

He turns his back to Sirius, grateful that his nap and the shock at Sirius’s cold arms have done away with the issue that brought him to lie face down in the sand in the first place, and he unfastens his jeans. He can feel Sirius’s eyes on him, and he can’t bear to turn toward him. He walks to the water, stiffly, and makes what Sirius will later call a “big girly fuss” on his way in. Remus is newly astonished at the stillness that overtook the whole scene when Sirius entered the lake earlier — the cold sucks Remus’s breath out through his feet, makes him yelp, freezes his bones. He walks slowly, letting each new inch of his legs grow used to the impossible cold before the next step.

The water is crystalline, no less so for the waves, which spoil Remus’s attempt at total control. He shrieks at the first wave to wash over his crotch and send his shorts billowing around him. Once his legs are fully in the water, his feet flat on the sandy floor, the bottom of his t-shirt soaking, he pauses and bends to pour water from a cupped hand over each of his arms. He scrubs at the mud, which runs in little rivulets down to his wrists before falling and disappearing in the lake.

He splashes his face with water, the back of his neck — so many places now where Sirius has touched him. He inhales deliberately, lets it out and, once his lungs fill again, lets his feet fly out from under him as if to sit on the bottom of the lake. He finds his feet beneath him again and resurfaces to hear Sirius cheering for him, hears him run splashing toward him, hears him leap with a “hup” and then hears the deadly silence of a fully submerged Sirius Black. He sees the white flash of Sirius’s naked body as he zooms past Remus’s legs under the water. He barely kicks and the water seems to understand. Under water Sirius does not _have_ grace. He makes it. Exudes it. Is it.

He faces Remus, some ten feet away when he surfaces, beyond the place where the waves break. The water rises and falls as if breathing, lapping at his navel, dipping to reveal the bones of his hips, the top points of the V that connects them. The water is clear, and Remus can see all of him, above and below the undulating surface, a heavenly body before him. Sirius stands as if his body is an offering. Remus can’t stop himself looking, and he can’t pretend his feeling is the same silliness of the roughhousing on the beach. 

Time slows. For a moment Sirius stares back at him with only a hint of a smile playing at his lips. Remus follows Sirius’s eyes as they absorb him, draw him closer: the mop of hair whose curls drip at his temples, his scratched face, the soft patch of his throat that flutters with each heartbeat, the darkened black of his old t-shirt as it clings to him — mercifully, hopefully, concealing beneath it Remus’s heaving chest and its desolate landscape of scars — the ropey veins of his thin, muscled arms, the gravity-defying float of his shorts around his thighs, clear down to his feet in the sand.

No one has ever looked at Remus this way, like he is art, like he would reward study. His blood moves fast and loud through all the miles of vessels inside him, his skin pebbles with goosebumps, tears spring again to his eyes and announce themselves as heat.

He sucks in a gasping breath as if to pull his hand from the hot stove of humiliation and slips himself below the cold surface of the great lake.


	6. The Road Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A return trip, a story about James Potter, a brief history of the House of Black, and a very nervous idiot named Remus Lupin.

The sandy ride home smells like wet pup and the grassy sweetness of Midwest summer air. Fireflies begin to undulate in the ditches. Padfoot sprawls at his will across the bench seat, head in Sirius’s lap, tail tucked against Remus’s thigh. 

The sky ahead is faintly purple, fading to indigo, navy, gathering to black behind them. Remus’s hair is rumpled and fluffy from drying in the wind. He pulls a hand through it and looks at Sirius, whose hair has dried to lazy waves that move languidly in the breeze. 

To give himself a reason to be looking at Sirius, Remus says, “Tell me about James.” 

He wants to know everything Sirius will tell him, but he is sorry to have deflated the peace with his voice. Sirius seems not to mind. 

“James Potter,” says Sirius, as if seeing James after a long absence. 

He pauses, his smile going a bit vacant. When he speaks again his voice is a bit rougher. 

“To really understand what James means to me, you probably have to see him in contrast with my family. You ready for that?”

“Um, I think so? Should I not be?”

“No, yes, it’s just — they’re terrible.” Sirius tells Remus about realizing at school that the cruelty of his parents was not just how all parents were. When it came down to it, the things that made him feel sick — the contempt they showed even the staff in their own household, the sense that he could never make them feel proud, the venom in his mother’s criticisms of everything from his piano scales to his “girly” mannerisms — all of it was unearned and evil. When he talks about his family, his spine straightens, not with its regular elegance, but with rigidity, like he’s bracing for a blow.

It becomes clear to Remus that Sirius’s family is very wealthy and that Sirius hates them for that, too. They had always been sponsors of screwed up political “causes,” but they didn’t throw themselves behind anti-LGBTQ legislation until they learned that Sirius was gay. Caught in a compromising position with a classmate, Sirius had confided in his younger brother, Regulus. 

“He slept on it for two nights, then told our parents. He wanted their favor.” A wry smile. “He wanted their love — I know just how he felt.” 

He goes quiet, and Remus fears the heat in his face or the racket in his heart will be enough to scare Sirius off of telling him more. 

“I understand him,” Sirius says, finally. “I forgive him. But I can’t call him my brother anymore.” 

The truth of it hangs in the air like the moon, plump, low, silver, indifferent. At a four-way stop, the truck rumbles, the crickets and frogs in the ditches trill, and Remus thinks that the noise is actually violent, but it passes as gentle because it’s consistent, like children on a playground, or running water over stones. 

“What was it that finally made you run?”

“A fundraiser. They hosted a dinner for a political group, some fake ‘family values’ organization that essentially pays politicians to oppose LGBTQ rights. They only thought to host the thing after they found out I was queer. To hurt me, they raised money to hurt people who are like me. They went to such _trouble_.” 

His eyes are fixed on the road, but they go a little distant. “All of these people came over in tuxes — these rich monsters paid a fortune to sit at the table in my house, and I had to wear a black tie and laugh at jokes that threatened me directly. That threatened strangers, not because my family actually cared about them enough to hate them, but because they were so embarrassed by me.” He goes quiet.

“I was _supposed_ to laugh at the jokes. I did for a while, until I couldn’t figure out who that was helping anymore. I used to play along with them for Regulus, but he’d made his decision. So I started asking questions. ‘What if _your_ son…?’ And my mother heard me scandalizing her guests. She dug her nails into my wrist and dragged me into the kitchen.” 

He shakes his head. “She said — I’ll never forget it — she said, ‘I’m going to tell you one more time. This little _gay stunt_ is not welcome under my roof.’”

He smiles now, but it has no mirth in it. “I couldn’t keep myself in check. My nerves just _spark_ sometimes. So I grinned at her and whispered, ‘Sorry, Mother, but one day this will be _my_ roof, and the whole house will be teeming with _little gay stunts._ Your heir is a flaming queer.’”

Remus literally cannot imagine having such courage. His mind is ten steps back — Sirius is _gay_ — and he’s catching up — Sirius is _brave_ — and catching up — Sirius has been _hurt_ . He _hates_ Sirius’s mother. Breathless, he asks, “What did she do?” 

“She slapped me. She actually took the time to turn her ring around so she could rake a diamond across my face — very in-character of her.” His hands are tight and tense on the wheel.

“I went upstairs and packed. I lugged a fucking _trunk_ down the stairs, and no one even looked up. Well. Reg did, but then he went back to eating and laughing. That’s the moment I replay over and over — his eyes on me, and then looking away, like he thought he saw something but it turned out to be nothing. I was the nothing. Something fractured right then and there. 

“I dragged my stuff out into the street — rain, of course, so dramatic — and walked without really thinking until I got to James’s house. The scrape of the trunk on the wet pavement, God, it was so violent! I must have looked like the scariest and sorriest excuse for a teenager by the time I got there. Euphemia — James’s mom — answered the door, which I thought even then was a brave thing to do, and it was like she became my mother right there, 2 AM on the front step. She hugged me in my wet, disgusting tux. She called for Dad — for her husband — James’s dad — Monty. 

“It was more than 24 hours before I talked to James at all. Effie took my stuff, shoved me into the bathroom to warm up and clean off in the shower. God, even their _towels_ felt kind. She’d put pajamas on the guest bed, and she brought me a grilled cheese and a cup of cocoa. I slept all through the next day and night.”

The color of his voice has changed. There is no more harshness, nothing metallic. 

“James woke me up eventually. I’d told him before that they were planning the event, but I hadn’t actually come out to him. He plopped himself on the bed and bounced till I opened my eyes. ‘Thanks for dropping by,’ he said, and I laughed, but then I realized where I was and why. 

“I must have looked worried, because he said, ‘They did it to get to you. Because you’re gay.’ It wasn’t a question — I was so relieved he didn’t _ask_. I just stared at him. He said, ‘Well. You were never one of them anyway. You’re a Potter, and we don’t throw mean-fancy-asshole parties. Hope you won’t miss them.’ 

“And it was just normal from then on. I’ll never be able to understand their kindness, let alone repay it.” 

The lights of the town glow up ahead. Remus notes the elegance of Sirius’s hands on the wheel, now they’ve relaxed. 

To be so _sure_ of who he is, to be so sure that who he is is someone deserving of _love_ , that he would run away — leave and never go back. Remus is in awe. Remus feels an awful longing — to love himself, to fill in the missing love in the life of this near-stranger, to tell his mother what has happened today, to work in his garden and refuse to look at Sirius and his idling truck that turned him, turned him, turned him to see himself anew. He longs to be strong and brave and he feels so sure he will disappoint. _I am more Regulus than Sirius_ , he thinks. 

“You okay?” Sirius’s brows are drawn slightly together, and his eyes shine in the dark as they search Remus’s face. The care there is alarming. “That was a lot of story.”

Rendered clumsy by Sirius’s concern, Remus answers honestly, “Yes. I just — you’re brave, but you shouldn’t have had to be.” A pause. “I don’t know what to say.” He opens and closes his mouth, hoping words will swoop to him in his desperation. “I should be asking _you_ . Are _you_ okay?”

Sirius huffs a little laugh. “After a day like today? I’m as good as I’ve ever been.” 

It is fully dark by the time Sirius pulls the truck into his driveway. The two men and one giant dog tumble sleepily out the doors. The truck creaks and clicks as it settles.

Remus stands in the driveway while Sirius rummages behind the seat of the truck. He feels a little useless and a lot awkward. He cannot name the differences, but he certainly does not feel the same as when they left earlier in the day. Should he just cross the street and go home now? What on earth has he done?

Sirius disrupts his symphony of self-doubt by emerging from the truck and walking to Remus. He grabs Remus’s wrist lightly in his fingertips. “That was fun,” Sirius says. Remus cannot breathe. 

“It was,” says Remus, turning to face Sirius, wrist still gently ensnared. “It was lovely. Thank you.” 

“Thank _you_. I didn’t know if you would come.” Sirius’s smile is all relief, none of the bluster from that afternoon. “Would you want to go again sometime? Or… or do something else — together?” It is too dark to be certain, but Remus believes Sirius is blushing. 

“Of course!” Remus has never felt so jittery about making a friend before. He tells himself it’s because male friendships are a minefield and adult friendships are impossible — it just feels good to know where he stands. But then he feels the electricity still in possession of his wrist, and he still can’t really breathe, and he knows that he has truly no idea where he stands but _oh_ , he wants to _stay_. He wants this feeling. 

Sirius is close to him, smiling in pleased puzzlement that is for Remus alone. “Goodnight then?” He all but whispers it. 

Remus is aware of the violent rise and fall of his chest. “Goodnight, Sirius,” he says. He leans toward Sirius’s face, senses Sirius leaning toward him. Like he’s pulling himself from a nightmare, he rips himself away, saying, “Right,” too loudly, and he doesn’t inhale again until he has reached his own door. 

He hears the jingle of Padfoot’s collar and can’t make out what Sirius is saying. What has he done? 

He turns the key as if for the first time — everything is new and his muscle memory is failing him. He wants to run back across the street. He wants to crawl into his bed. He wants to disappear.

He climbs the stairs, stands in the dark front room, looking out the picture window to see Sirius’s lights go on, to see Sirius drop his beach gear and lean heavily against the inside of his apartment door. 

“Shit,” Remus whispers to the dark. His house is more empty than it has ever been. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, hello! This is my first ever fic! I've been lurking in the Wolfstar fandom for a few months now, and it's time to show my face and use my imagination for good. Thanks for reading!


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